"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take
After a while, Ivar had grown tired of waiting at the border. Kicking rocks into the water was only fun for a limited period of time, and eventually Ivar turned to the now dark @[Rey] beside him. She looked different, he decided, but the thought wasn’t interesting enough to distract him for long. The scaled creature is not especially patient, so when the sun has moved an appropriate amount of time across the sky, he was not inclined to wait any longer.
The trip back to Loess was uneventful, though Ivar is quieter than he might otherwise be, bothered by the lack of reception for a reason he can’t quite name.
The rolling hills of the kingdom soon spread out around them, an endless grassy sea. Here are there, rocks erupt from the earth, some barely high enough to see and others many meters tall. The greenery that covers the hills is unnaturally varied – a saguaro erupts from a bed of ferns, several orchids hanging from the crooks of its thorny arms. An acacia trees shields a grove of red poppies and white hyacinths, and as Ivar moves forward he ducks beneath a vine that droops from the palm tree overhead.
“Welcome to Loess, Rey.” He says as he stops. They are at the peak of a high hill, below them a weeping willow protects a bubbling saltwater spring. “You’re welcome to stay here for as long as you like. Live here, even, if you want.” The protocol of giving an orphan a home is not something that Ivar is familiar with. It doesn’t quite have an instinctual equivalent, though the long-lived kelpie inside him murmurs something about patience being worth it.
From my breast the cold heart taking, Give it to Belerma's care
We leave.
I’m not in the position to say otherwise, (of course I’m just a youngling, after all, with only the powers of observation to guide me) but adults and their imaginary boundaries fascinate me. Say I cannot pass, and I myself will do just that. Tell me I cannot do something, and I’ll find a way. The rest worry too much over consequence and the likes. I watch Ivar as he turns angrily away and say nothing while we travel - but all the while my mind is turning gear over gear with intrepid fascination.
Was there something I was missing? A higher stakes in the game of life than death? The movers and shakers of this world all fashion in tandem when it comes to oddities; they hesitate where I least expect them to, barge ahead whereas I would’ve waited a hairsbreadth longer.
These are things I mull over while we walk: “Could I, should I be different? Do I have that pleasure?” I know the answer. Already I am something that never was - a nobody in a world of ‘someones’. I walk among them as their own, but I can never be them. They have stories written long before theirs, and many more will come after - Ivar’s life is just the meat in an otherwise robust sandwich of existence.
I, however, am the origin story.
“Welcome to Loess, Rey.” He says, giving me a little thrill of pleasure. I peer around him, out into the expanse I’d not even known was changing while we walked. A smattering of hills, a herd of arched-back cats with an assortment of flora to brighten the picture. Ivar dives beneath an overhanging and I follow suit, without the need of ducking my head. Together we view gurgling springs. I say nothing as he hands me my long-coveted golden ticket. Nothing aside from, “I will live here, thank you.”
There’s nothing more to be said. That’s not to say that I don’t bump the soft swell of my dark forehead against the flat of his shoulder as I pass by, or that I turn back to him with my soft mouth pressed tight against the threat of a beaming smile. “We’ll see each other soon. You don’t need to worry over me - I can keep myself entertained.” I explain, leaning down the soft incline of our lookout with a few more steps forward.
“That is, unless, you’d like to show me around.” I offer quickly, suspended halfway between coming and going while I wait for the pleasant tilt of his reply. Something in me hopes he’ll say no … I want us to meet again under different circumstances. I want even for there to a be chance that he might forget about me, the little oddity in the den.
